Health Archives - The Osegards

A new relationship with food

Alyssa Osegard on January 29, 2020

When we got married I could cook Mac ’n cheese and anything that went in a microwave.

That’s it. Unless you count the fact that I can follow a good cookie recipe after a couple of years working in the Wartburg Bakery!

To cook or not to cook

Cody, however, had worked as a cook in a restaurant for a number of years. Honestly, I was a bit terrified of cooking for him (you know, for fear of poisoning him). I avoided cooking as much as possible and went with super fool-proof recipes, eating out, or letting Cody cook. Once I realized that the odds of me unintentionally poisoning my new husband were pretty slim, I decided to learn how to cook.

I would make fun meals from our favorite restaurants like this 3 Cheese Chicken Penne from Applebees. I loved learning to get creative with leftovers to reduce food waste. My cookbooks were out four hours at a time as I searched for recipes that would be fun to make. I was learning slowly, but it was fun and I gained confidence with every meal I made.

Tacos always encourage love of cooking and eating!

The meals we made we delicious, but often very heavy in processed things that were not great for us. It was weighing me down physically and mentally, but I didn’t mind too much because I was finally having fun!

Food for the body AND mind

A couple of years later, I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. Both were just on the verge of needing medication, but I wanted to avoid that at all costs. TRULY, no shame to those who medicate. It was a personal decision, because I’m very sensitive to medication, so I wanted to avoid it if possible. To avoid taking medication, I had to double down on anything that I could control in my lifestyle to help manage my symptoms. I exercised, spent more time growing in my faith, went to therapy, committed to 8 hours of sleep nightly, etc. It was all helping some, but I could tell there was still something messing with me mentally. No matter how I avoided it, the time had come that I needed to adjust my eating habits.

A balanced intake of food

I started focusing more on portion sizes and getting a good balance of protein, veggies, fruits, carbs, healthy fats, etc. Even though I didn’t want to admit it, it was making a huge difference in my darkest days with mental health struggles.

However, it also hurt my enjoyment of cooking. I became too focused on eating what was “right” that I would only eat what I thought I was allowed that day. Alternatively, I would give myself too much grace and binge on every “junk” food I could think of for a few days because I “deserved it”. Cooking became more of a battle and less of a joy.

Since I didn’t enjoy my time in the kitchen anymore, I got frustrated and started losing the results I had been feeling physically and mentally.

I found myself frequently ordering pizza because making a perfectly balanced, portioned meal feels like too much work. I wouldn’t allow myself some of my favorite meals because they were too carb-heavy. Maybe they had too many processed ingredients, or didn’t have enough (or any) veggies or proteins.

However, some of the recipes I was avoiding truly would be beneficial in some ways. They were made of 100% whole food and 0 processed junk. They were healthy, even if they weren’t “PERFECT” to my meal plans.

Finding a balance

This year, I’m committing to making more food at home, even if it isn’t balanced perfectly. Instead, I’m balancing my enjoyment in the kitchen with my need to eat whole, nutritious foods. I want to love being in the kitchen AND be healthy physically and emotionally. It’s possible. I still use many of the guidelines I learned in the food programs I followed to help me stay on track, but I don’t fret about being perfect anymore. It’s still a work in progress, but 2020 will be the year I find my love for cooking once again.

Equipment-free workouts from Beachbody

Alyssa Osegard on October 30, 2018

One thing we hear from people all the time is that it’s hard to workout because they travel too much or don’t have any equipment at home! We’ve compiled a list of all of the equipment-free (or yoga-mat-only, because you can make that work) workouts that are offered through a subscription to Beachbody on Demand.

If you want more information about a program (or want to learn how to maximize your results AND get a 25% discount), please fill out this quick form!

These workouts range from 4 minutes to 92 minutes and include yoga, abs, strength, cardio, and more, so there really is something for everyone!

Here is a list of equipment-free workouts from Beachbody:

Brazil Butt Lift Carnivale
Brazil Butt Lift Master Series

A little more obsessed
Body Beast
Ho'Ala Ke Kino
Total Body Solution

Pre Natal Fitness
Diastasis Recti Exercise

With more programs being added throughout the year!

Neither Cody or me LOVE working out, but we DO love being at our best because it makes us better spouses, friends, workers, and just all around happier people! For me, it also helps control my SAD symptoms. With so many equipment-free workouts from Beachbody, we have no excuse but to get a sweat session in!

Faith and Food

Alyssa Osegard on October 24, 2018

Faith and Food have always gone hand in hand. Food is everywhere in faith traditions like Christmas and Easter, not to mention potlucks, funerals, baby showers, bible studies. Everywhere we go in faith it feels as though food is there too.

There is nothing inherently wrong with food, but I found that the way I learned to love food didn’t align with what I knew God was calling me to do. I knew that God wanted me to treat my body better. I was treating it like a dumpster – filling it to the brim with all kinds of junk. Delicious junk, sure, but junk all the same. God kept nudging me to do better with how I fueled my body, but something just wasn’t clicking in me.

Christian Objections

There were a few objections I kept hearing in the Christian community that made me question what I knew God wanted me to do.

God has better ways for us to use our time other than meal planning or exercising. He doesn’t care what we eat!
“Getting healthy” promotes vanity.
God gave us food so we might as well enjoy it!

Still, I kept reading things like:

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.
1 Corinthians 10:31

And

12 You say, “I am allowed to do anything”—but not everything is good for you. And even though “I am allowed to do anything,” I must not become a slave to anything. 13 You say, “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.” (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies. 14 And God will raise us from the dead by his power, just as he raised our Lord from the dead. 15 Don’t you realize that your bodies are actually parts of Christ?
1 Corinthians 6:12-15

So what? It’s just food.

As I watched the my weight climb and my energy levels decrease, I knew that this couldn’t be what God had intended. These verses I had sparked something in me, and I was determined to find what God truly desires for us. Here are 3 of my realizations so far:

Food can become an idol. I needed something that would fuel my body well, but be EASY to follow so that it wouldn’t become all-consuming.
I needed to do this not just for me and my health, but for God’s glory. Nothing we do means anything without Christ.
When I let myself indulge in anything and everything, I’m not actually “enjoying what God gave me.” I’m really giving into the temptation to be lazy or gluttonous.

So I’m tackling this from both angles. I’m learning how to eat healthier in a simple and sustainable way. But I’m not going on a diet. No rules or restrictions. For me, this creates a balance between enjoying God’s gifts, but treating food as fuel and not as an idol.

I also am doing this to better myself for GOD. When I get busy, I tend to eat poorly. My body responds to this by being sluggish and even getting sick. When I’m sick and sluggish, I’m not performing at a level that is allowing me to serve to the best of my ability.

The Plan

I’m NOT doing this to be “better” than anyone else. I want to be better than I was, but I refuse to compare myself to others. I do however want to be an encouragement, because gluttony and food issues tend to be so overlooked in the church.

Those who feel free to eat anything must not look down on those who don’t. And those who don’t eat certain foods must not condemn those who do, for God has accepted them.
Romans 14:3

I recently found a program that has no rules or restrictions. It simply is a mindset shift that teaches how food is fuel for our bodies to perform at their best. I’m always a little leery of mindset things, because I find that they become very “Me” centered. I found this approach to be really healthy though, and am bolstering that with learning from the spiritual side of things too.

I hope you will join Cody and I as we run our first ever “Faith and Food Bootcamp”. When you sign up you will receive:

A one month nutrition course led by me, a certified mentor
A bible study that aligns with the nutrition course led by Cody and I
Lifetime access to 40+ videos in the nutrition course
1 month of family-friendly recipes, grocery lists, and meal prep tips emailed to you each week
A meal tracker to help you see where you are at and where you can make progress
A water bottle
And MORE!

Sound like a good fit for you? Let us know here!

One simple tool to take back your health, time, and mindset!

Alyssa Osegard on October 10, 2018

It’s time. We’re taking back our health, our mindset, our time, AND we’re getting out of our slump. It’s time to take back the kitchen, and we want to show you how you can do it too!

Taking Back Our Health

I’ve always been one to over-eat. I love carbs and cookies and brownies and wine. Poptarts, pizza, bagels, and cookies were always around growing up. I graduated college with a kitchen-skills resume consisting of baking cookies and microwaving. That’s all I could do, for real. I’ve always eaten mindlessly and emotionally. Really, any emotion – happy, sad, celebratory, angry. It was all a cause to eat.

Last year it really hit me, I don’t want to treat my body like that anymore. It was going to be hard to undo 25 years of poor eating, though. There were plenty of diet options out there that I looked into, but I realized that starving myself wasn’t going to work, and that most diets were not sustainable. I had to learn how to eat in a way that would truly fuel my body, but as I looked over our list of common recipes, I was at a loss.

Taking Back Our Mindsets

As I mentioned before, emotional eating was one of my biggest problems for most of my life. I have all sorts of theories about why eating has been a struggle for me (including the fact that food is often equated with fellowship, friendship, and family), but no matter what the root cause of my food struggles, I knew I needed a mindset shift.

My goal was to think of food as fuel and to have a better opinion of healthy foods! Cody and I also needed to change our mindset on money and food. When we went all in with our budget, we cut WAY back to spending $50 a week for all food, but to do this I would spend 2-3 hours meal planning each week.

Now we are balancing out. We are making sure to eat nutritious options, take care of the bodies God gave us, and still be good stewards with our money. We are spending a bit more than $50 a week, but getting all our nutrition and spending ZERO time meal planning. It’s a balance of eating enough and eating WELL. But we still only spend about $60 a week!

Taking Back Our Time

When we first got married, I was determined to be the world’s best wife when it came to dinner time. I was going to save us a ton of money, make all sorts of new recipes, and never waste any food. It was fun for a while, but it took hours each week to find the good deals, make sure I could use up all of our ingredients, and to find new recipes that we would both like. Usually then it would take another hour or so to grocery shop because our list was organized by recipe, not by type of food. It was a mess!

Getting out of our slump

This system for TRYING to make good choices meant that a lot of times our recipes weren’t as healthy as I wanted them to be (because I couldn’t always find suitable recipes that met all the criteria). It got tiring doing this same routine week after week, so after a while we lost our variety and started eating the same mediocre meals over and over.

Take Back the Kitchen

Enter Take Back the Kitchen, a program that solved all of our meal planning and meal prepping woes. Each week, a registered dietitian sends us a meal plan. These are recipes she has approved, so they meet our standards for health. They are laid out with substitutions we can make, are seasonally appropriate, and take into consideration the “weird” ingredients, so that we can use them up!

There is a dinner recipe for every day of the week, and we get to try so many new things! We LOVE the ease of printing off a list that is divided by where we might find the food in the store. Then, we come home and prep things off a list that tells us exactly what can be prepped ahead of time.

Our nutrition is in check. We have time back each week. We are learning to enjoy healthier foods that fuel our body. Not only that, but every month we have the option to choose from a selection of nutrition products that helps us stay on track with our healthy goals. Even with this , we still only spend $60/week on groceries!

How you can participate

If you are interested in getting this same, amazing program every week, we would love to have you join us! To receive the meal plans, there are a few different products* that qualify you for a full MONTH:

Incredible shakes that have the nutrition of a salad but taste like a milkshake
Delicious protein bars that have way less sugar than their competitors,
A package of pre and post workout drinks,
A nutrition course that will help you fix your mindset around food.

The cost for these varies from $110 to $160 (though if you are interested in a 25% discount, reach out!) . You know that we are strict with our finances, and we believe these products are absolutely worth the cost. The financial savings of having a healthy, easy-to-follow plan in place is worth it. Not only that, but knowing that our bodies are getting the nutrients we need is a huge benefit. Plus, we now spend NO time finding, planning, and organizing our meals for the week. If you want more information on how you can take back the kitchen, fill out this form. The form isn’t a commitment – just a chance for you to decide if this is a good fit for you!

Take Back the Kitchen Information Form: https://goo.gl/forms/lFslv5KilgDm4RNu1

*The consumable products come with a 30 day bottom of the bag money back guarantee! There is NO RISK to trying this out! If it doesn’t work for you, you can simply send the empty bag back!

Transform your life in nine weeks!

Alyssa Osegard on September 27, 2018

Nine weeks was all it took to change the trajectory of our finances. Our finances were a mess – we were in debt and had no consistency. When the opportunity arose, we made a small investment into a kit and added some accountability. Nine weeks later we had new habits, had paid off $8000 in debt, and were set on a path to financial peace!

The key was diving ALL IN for the nine weeks. We committed to the program’s guidelines and did our absolute best. It wasn’t perfect, but we were committed and consistent.

We haven’t regretted that decision once. In fact, we realized that the same ideas could be applied to our health, so here we go.

FOR NINE WEEKS we are committing to filling our cups even when our plates are full. We know that taking care of ourselves allows us to be better spouses, coworkers, and friends, who are more able to pour into others!

Our nine week all-in guidelines include:

-Four 40 minutes workouts a week that are pre-set and easy to do at home or at the gym
-Prepping meals for each week to keep us on track, using a menu emailed out each week by a Registered Dietitian
-Weekly work-free dates (or outings with friends, if single)
-Creating a schedule each week that sets us up for success, no matter what we have going on
-Checking in with our friends who partner with us for the nine weeks

When it came to our finances, nine weeks was all it took to change the entire trajectory of our future, and we are confident that nine weeks is all it will take for us to change our health and schedule. Life is better in community, though, so we want YOU to partner with us!

Let’s do it. Let’s commit to our OWN health on a daily basis, and focus on the relationships that matter most to us. It won’t be easy, but we know it will be worth it, and we are so excited for others to join us on this 9-week journey! Comment “I’M IN” if you want more information on how to join us for this nine week transformation!

Choose Your Hard

Alyssa Osegard on September 23, 2018

Choose your hard.

If I had a nickel for every time I heard that saying. While it’s become a bit of an overused saying, it is something I come back to frequently in my life when I’m feeling particularly unmotivated. Slowly but surely “choose your hard” is helping me become more disciplined.

Choose your hard – Lifestyle

I first heard the phrase being used in relation to choosing a healthier lifestyle. It was used something like this:

Getting up to do a workout is hard.
Turning down take-out for a cleaner meal is hard.
But you know what else is hard?
Knowing you aren’t at your best and feeling uncomfortable in your skin. Feeling sluggish all the time because you haven’t fueled your body well.

The saying really got into my head. I truly dislike working out. I know that it will be better for me in the long run, but it’s so hard to fit that into my day. However, you know what else I don’t like? I don’t like knowing that I’m not doing my best. Having low energy all the time is uncomfortable. I don’t like feeling uncomfortable in my skin when I know it’s something that I can change. When push comes to shove, I know I would rather choose uncomfortable for 40 minutes a day instead of tired and uncomfortable.

And when I am actively making those healthy choices, hard as they may be, they get easier as they become habit. Eating out all the time and sitting on the couch all day can become second nature. Working out and eating is becoming second nature for me.

I’d only really heard “choose your hard” in the context of a healthy lifestyle versus a sedentary lifestyle, but it dawned on me that the same is also true of our financial journey.

Choose your hard – Finances

You know what’s hard right now? Being four years into marriage and still renting places we like but aren’t OURS. Driving a car that sounds like it could fall a part at any second stinks. Having to turn down trips with friends because we can’t afford to travel as much as we would like is really hard. Saving a significant amount of our income instead of spending it on supposed “lifestyle upgrades” is hard!

Of course, the first few years of marriage were HARD financially too. You know what was hard about our journey? Living paycheck to paycheck was HARD. Owing people (specifically loan providers) money plus interest every month was HARD.

The thing is, paycheck to paycheck living, surviving off of credit cards, and not having enough money saved for retirement has become NORMAL. As a society, we’ve made this hard our normal. It’s become second nature to live paycheck to paycheck and to buy all the nice new stuff all the time because it’s “what everyone does”.

For us, we chose our hard. We fought to get out of debt and start saving and to live on less than we make. Why? Because we knew that when you choose your hard often enough, it gets easier. Now, we live in peace with a hope for our future because we chose the “weird” path as our hard, and we’ve let these habits become second nature to us. We let ourselves become disciplined now.

What’s hard now is setting us up for success later on.

Choose your hard.

3 Ideas for a Simple, Healthy Breakfast

Alyssa Osegard on August 15, 2018

You’ve heard it before – breakfast is the most important meal of the day! While I’m not sure you can really rank meals, it is certainly important to properly fuel your body in the morning so that you are prepared for the day! We love a good, healthy breakfast. Here are some of our favorites:

Pico Breakfast Bowls

Serves: 1

Ingredients:
¼ cup corn
¼ cup black beans
1 cup homemade pico
2 eggs

Directions:
In a pan over medium heat, warm up corn and beans.
Once corn and beans are heated through, add two eggs, scrambling them in the pan.
Once eggs are cook through, add them to a bowl and top with pico.

Why we love it: The protein in the eggs and beans will help keep you full til lunch time. The carbs are just enough to give you some energy, but not enough for your body to crash. We especially love the addition of vegetables that help you mentally prepare yourself for a day of healthy eating!

Pro tip: At the start of the week, put measured out pico in a mason jar. Top with ¼ cup corn and ¼ cup black beans. You can create a mason jar for each day and grab and go!

Bell Pepper Breakfast Tacos

Serves: 1

Ingredients:
½ bell pepper, sliced
¼ cup onion, sliced
2 corn tortillas
One egg
2 slices of turkey bacon (or regular bacon)
Optional: Hot sauce. We love the Mango Habanero Hot Sauce we found at Aldi!

Directions:
-Cook 2 slices of bacon in a pan. Set aside.
-Saute onion and peppers in a pan.
-In a small bowl, scramble an egg. Add to pan and cook through.
-Optional: add a splash of hot sauce

To Serve:
Warm corn tortillas in microwave for 15-30 seconds.
Top each tortilla with one slice of bacon, then top with half the egg mixture. Repeat with the second tortilla. Serve immediately.

Why we love it: Tacos. Enough said. Also, the protein in this is amazing. We LOVE to SPICE up our breakfast with this flavorful dish!

Pro tip: Cook bacon in a pan at the beginning of the week AND saute your onions and peppers ahead of time. That way, all you have to do is reheat and add eggs in the morning!

Dessert for Breakfast

Serves: 1

Ingredients:
4 oz water
1-2 cups of ice
1 banana
1 tbsp peanut butter (no sugar added)
0.5-1 cup spinach
1 scoop of your favorite flavor of Shakeology (don’t know what that is? Contact us and we will hook you up!)

Directions: Add all ingredients together and blend. Drink immediately or freeze for 1-2 hours until it has a more frozen-yogurt type consistency.

Why we love it: It tastes like ice cream for breakfast, but is actually a crazy-good-for-you, healthy breakfast, and will keep you full and satisfied. This breakfast is also makes for a great grab-and-go option!

Pro tip: A mason jar fits on a normal blender AND works as a cup!

Final Thoughts!

I’ve always loved to eat breakfast because I usually wake up famished, but I’ve found that a healthy breakfast makes all the difference. Having a few simple, healthy breakfast ideas in my back pocket makes the morning run smoothly. Plus, I can even make these pre-coffee!

Top 5 Favorite Travel Snacks

Alyssa Osegard on June 27, 2018

Do you LOVE travel snacks? We always have. Road trips have always been an excuse for giant fountain pops, fast food, and lots of candy! However, since Cody and I have been working on having a healthier lifestyle, those travel snacks weren’t fitting the bill anymore! Here are some of our alternatives that are simple, healthy, AND delicious

1) Snackable fruits and veggies

We love to grab a bag of carrots! Since our car snacks have always been super munchable, baby carrots, apples, pears, baby bell peppers, and more are perfect travel snack!

2) Green Pea Snack Crisps.

We got the White Cheddar ones from Harvest Snacks on our Grand Canyon trip and THEY TASTE LIKE WHITE CHEDDAR CHEETOS. I don’t know that I will ever be able to pass them up. We’ve linked them below with our affiliate link because we love these things (and we want more money to buy even more of them. So buy a lot so we can get a great kickback, mmmkay? Ha!) <br />

3) Air popped popcorn!

We both LOVE popcorn. You know the buckets at theatres that are the size of a small child and offer free refills? That’s one of the reasons we shouldn’t be allowed in movie theatres. Air popped is the way to go. WAY lower in calories, fat, etc, it is the perfect “munchy” snack in the car!

4) Snack boxes

These things are basically homemade lunchables. We do this when we have a long drive and don’t want to stop, when we have coolers to make the food stay fresh longer, or even when we have to leave right at a meal time.

We include nuts, raisins, apples, cheese cubes, deli meat, peppers, and sometimes a little piece of chocolate just because.

5) Shakeology!

We never travel without our shake now. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times this shake has saved us from the drive-through (and when we chatted too long to have a lunch break at Sassy Con). It keeps us full, gives us energy to stay awake for the drive, and has the nutrients of a TON of vegetables (I’ve heard as much as the equivalent of six salads!). It also has a lot of protein which helps keeps us full as we stay at the pump when refueling, passing on all our favorite junk foods and unhealthy travel snacks!

For us, these snacks help to kick off a road trip on the right foot. We make sure to eat quality nutrients and avoid our typical sugar-filled vices when possible. What are some of your staple travel snacks, nutritious or otherwise?

Emotional Eating: It’s time to overcome!

Alyssa Osegard on April 11, 2018

I am an Emotional Eater. It’s something I have really noticed about myself recently, but I know it’s something I have done most of my life. Mayo clinic defines emotional eating as “. . . eating as a way to suppress or soothe negative emotions, such as stress, anger, fear, boredom, sadness and loneliness.” I eat when I’m hungry, when I’m stressed, when I’m lonely, when I’m sad, but most often I call it a reward.

We paid off all our debt? Celebrate with food!
I had a stressful day at school? I deserve to relax and just order a pizza.
Cody is gone all week for rehearsals? Hey, I kept the house running, time for ice cream!

I also justify my eating because of my cravings. For years I have gotten CRAZY INTENSE cravings. We’re talking basically pregnancy cravings without the pregnancy. I get so fixated on whatever food it is that I can NOT stop thinking about it. Cody has made many late night trips to the grocery store just to get me to shut up. (Thanks, babe).

Where my emotional eating stems from

I never thought anything of it, mostly because I feel that so much of life is spent around the table. Family gatherings, time with friends, big events – we spend them all around the table! I don’t think that is necessarily a problem on its own, but I think it made it harder for me to see my emotional eating as more than a physical issue, but as a spiritual issue, too.

In fact, emotional eating seemed to be reinforced not only in general life events but in events in the church.

Celebrating Christ’s birth or resurrection? Time to stuff yourself with a big feast!
Funeral? It’s a sad time, let’s give you a ton of comfort foods!
Church gathering? Can anyone say casseroles, rolls, and jello salads? These are basically the entire reason that they even build churches with basements.

Looking back at my life, I think that on a subconscious level, these events and experiences around food taught me that when we are sick, sad, happy, or feeling ANYTHING at all, stuffing yourself with comfort foods is the way to go.

The spiritual side of emotional eating

I had always heard that God wanted me to treat my body like a temple, but I always associated the temple with church and my church experience with casseroles galore. I never really saw the problem, but when I think about the context of the early temples in the Bible, it sheds a whole new light to the idea.

The first we hear of a temple in the Bible was Solomon’s temple. He built it with the finest of materials, including overlaying the whole place with gold. The most important function was to house the ark of the covenant, and the temple was the most sacred place, dedicated to the Lord.

In 1 Kings 9, the Lord tells Solomon that as long as he “walk before me faithfully with integrity of heart and uprightness,” the temple will remain. But if he or his descendants “turn away from me and do not observe the commands and decrees I have given you and go off to serve other gods,” the temple will turn to rubble.

Think about the metaphor there. The literal, actual temple would remain standing as long as Solomon was putting God first. If he turned away from God, the physical temple would TURN TO RUBBLE. If I am supposed to treat my body like a temple, I need start by taking the amazing care that Solomon shows. The temple is not a dumping ground for anything and everything that looks good at the time. It is not built quickly, it is not built with cost or effort as an object. What would the first temple have been if Solomon had just decided to build it from mud and sticks, because that was easier or faster? Why cover the whole place in gold and waste all that money? Yellow paint should do the trick, right?

These things seem so simple as we look at scripture, and the decisions are clear to see. If God instructed me the way he did Solomon, the decisions I make that affect my body would be simple! Well that’s EXACTLY what I’m learning he has done. It may not be specific guidelines of “eat this, do this, don’t do this,” but it does address what for me is the root of my emotional eating. When I eat because of the emotions I’m feeling, I’m turning to food to satisfy when I should be turning to God.

1Peter 2:2 Tells us that what would should crave is “pure spiritual milk”. We are designed to crave, but what we ought to be craving is Jesus instead of junk food.

Next steps to overcoming emotional eating

Now I have the head knowledge. I understand that I am an emotional eater and that physically AND spiritually this is not good for me. What I am working on is putting it all into practice. It is hard to undo years and years of poor emotional eating habits! Here are some of the steps I am taking:

I am in an emotional eating support group right now. Here, I am learning to overcome emotional eating with help from other people who are further along in the process than me and by sharing stories with people who are in the same place as me.
I am preparing myself for a NEW program coming out next month called the 2B Mindset that addresses weight loss and healthy eating not from a starvation or calorie-counting standpoint, but purely from the mindset. (ps. I’d love to help get you set up with this program if you’d like!)
When I want a reward for something, I try to either find a non-food option or go for a food that will properly fuel my body!
I am working on my relationship with God and learning day by day to crave HIM above anything else!

I know I have a long way to go, and this struggle is going to take more than a couple days of attention in my life. However, I know I CAN overcome it with the help of my community and my God. If you are interested in joining a community that will help you overcome emotional eating, please reach out to me at [email protected]. I would LOVE to chat and hear your story!

Remembering the Why

Alyssa Osegard on March 28, 2018

Why exercise? Why eat healthy? Why stick to a schedule, do my devotions, or wake up early? I always say that I do these things so I can be the happiest, healthiest version of myself, and to set a good example for our future children.

Last week I lost sight of my why.

Cody has been in a show and is out late rehearsing. I want to see him, so I stay up late too. Staying up late makes it hard to get up in the morning, so I sleep in. When I sleep in, I miss my workout. Missing my workout has three negative consequences: I justify not following my timed nutrition meal plan, I sleep through my devotion time, and I leave the house feeling rushed. When I feel rushed, I am not as focused. When I’m not as focused, I’m not as productive. When I’m not as productive it is so much easier to go through the drive-through. It’s a vicious cycle that leaves me feeling worse about my decisions and behind on life.

That was my week last week. Add to that an imbalance of hormones not just from PMS but from not treating my body well, PLUS a very emotional (highs and lows) week. . . .well, you can imagine how fun I was to be around!

My anxiety was higher than it has been in a long time. I didn’t feel as confident. I just felt like I was in a fog all day, every day.

Time to Reset

This week, I am back at it. Will I be perfect? Doubtful. Am I going to beat myself up for slipping behind last week? Absolutely NOT! If I expect perfection in everything I do all the time, I am bound to be disappointed. But I am going to try my best to give attention to myself through exercise, rest, time with God, healthy food, and more! I don’t want to fall off the wagon again, and sometimes it takes a little misstep to remind us of our “why”s!